


Matador

by Jankenpopp



Category: RWBY
Genre: Abuse, F/M, Impregnation, Pregnancy, Pregnant Sex, Rape, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-12 15:09:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19134574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jankenpopp/pseuds/Jankenpopp
Summary: Haven Academy has survived the White Fang attack, but Ruby Rose finds herself separated from her team. As luck would have it, she's not the only one who's suddenly alone...but the other one is a monster from her teammate's past. A hungry one. Written as a birthday gift for a friend.





	1. Fall

**Author's Note:**

> I condone none of what occurs in this fic, be it the age gap, the rape, or the attendant abuse. It's prurient fantasy written as a birthday present for a friend, and everything in it should be treated as such. It's also my first time writing rape, and given my friends' tastes I know it will not be my last. Feel free to tear this one to pieces. I try to do my research, but I want to improve. Proceed with caution.

Gods, did Ruby’s head hurt.

Her world had snuffed out some time ago in a blaze of shouts and gunfire. The sights and sounds of battle had long since run together like melting ice sculptures, memories that blurred and mingled in the back of her mind and drowned her in a chilly pool of confusion. Her head was pounding badly. The pain was cold behind her eyes, not unlike when she ate ice cream too fast. She was dimly aware of something large and rough pressing against her side. As her senses gradually tested their surroundings, Ruby realized she was lying  _ on  _ her side, on the ground.

Her eyes had drifted open at some point, inviting a cruel spike of light into the strange, dark comfort of her unconsciousness. It did nothing for her headache. Ruby squeezed her eyes shut against the assault of waking, willing herself fruitlessly to sink back into nothingness.

Several sensations abruptly vied for her attention and then for the mantle of most alarming.

There was something around Ruby’s neck, something pressing gently against her throat from all sides. One hand flew to touch it, finding what felt like segmented metal. This wasn’t hers, was it?

Her other hand was empty. She felt around for her weapon, finding naught but the hard scratch of ground before her...behind her...where was Crescent Rose? Ruby searched blindly with both hands, whimpering as she picked up speed. Her friends needed her, she couldn’t fight without-

A fresh throb in Ruby’s head made her freeze. Her throat tightened with mounting dread. She knew where last she’d felt that pain. She’d been in her own bed at home, sheets tucked tight around her. The warmth and the softness hadn’t mattered. The last thing she’d seen before waking up had been-

“Cinder!”

Pyrrha was dead. She’d watched Cinder kill the Invincible Girl, kill her classmate, kill her friend. Silver light had overtaken her, surging from the corners of her vision, blinding her, lighting up the summit of the CCT Tower. And it had happened again, hadn’t it? She’d seen Cinder lunging for Jaune in Haven Academy's entrance hall, one arm pulled back to strike, and once again the light had come for her. Danger, death, threatening those she loved and plunging her into the unknown...

Panic gnawed at Ruby, shutting out the world even as it swam up around her like a school of sharks. She pawed at the ground, flailing for something familiar - a teammate’s hand, the grip of her beloved Crescent Rose - when all at once the ground fell away beneath her. A second of horrifying weightlessness exploded into a jarring impact against her shoulder, forcing a cry from her mouth. Her eyes finally shot open, heedless of the waking world with its deadly brightness.

As Ruby’s environment sharpened and settled around her, she found that it wasn’t that bright after all. If anything it was dingy in the cell where she found herself, a single candle the source of the once-violent light. Ruby watched the little flame as she pushed herself to a sitting position, her eyes latching on to the movement of the fire as she reoriented herself. The wax had melted into a frozen waterfall around the short candle, which meant it had been burning for some time. How long had she been here? She winced against her lingering headache and reclined, jumping a bit as something dug into her upper back. She looked behind her to find a bed, a cracked wooden frame playing host to rumpled burlap sheets stuffed with straw.

_ Now  _ she was on the ground. So that bed was where she’d started her morning, before falling off. Or her evening. She wished she even knew what time it was.

What had happened since the battle at Haven? Was Jaune alive? Was anyone? The last thing she remembered was that silver light, then a blow to the head...ah. There  _ was  _ a dull ache in the back of her head too, come to think of it.

Ruby braced herself against the bedframe and lifted herself gently to her feet. She gritted her teeth, willing her strength to flow back into her legs while she focused on the poorly sanded wood beneath her. It’d be just her luck to get a splinter here in this cell. She hated splinters.

It was unmistakably a cell, judging by the rusted bars that stood scant feet from the bed. There was a toilet in one corner - one of those holes in the ground that was common in Mistral, Ruby noted with a wrinkle of her nose. The door boasted a heavy padlock on the other side. Beyond that lay a corridor of earth reinforced with wood planks, lit by one pitiful torch that seemed to suck the light from the unseen reaches of the hall. It was warm, musty, and earthy wherever she was, like being trapped in a particularly spacious grave.

Ruby’s fear weighed on her heart, shot through with an undercurrent of despair. So they had lost...or they had won, but lost Ruby. She should have been with her teammates in the Haven dorms or the infirmary, not stuffed into some forsaken hole in the ground. Not left here by the gods only knew who to rot, or to-

Movement caught Ruby’s eye somewhere in the black. Someone was coming. They were accompanied only by footsteps, whose regular tempo suggested that they did not need a torch to find the way. Ruby squinted into the dark corridor, straining to see who or what it might be. It couldn’t be a Grimm; she’d be dead if they’d found her by now. The figure gained definition as it approached the weak torch beyond her cell, step by step into the light toward the only possible destination.

Whatever held Ruby’s heart in her chest snapped and dropped it into her stomach. She knew that shape. She’d seen it in one of Blake’s sketches. Charcoal and paper did no justice to the way he moved. Ruby would swear he glided if she didn’t watch his legs move, hear his footsteps.

Hidden from the eyes of Remnant on the proper side of a prison cell, serene behind his bone-white Grimm mask, Adam Taurus was the picture of calm.

“Little Rose, Little Rose.” There was no reason to keep his voice down, yet he chose to anyway. He spoke low, barely above a whisper, forcing Ruby to move forward and lean in to hear him. “Awake at last. You have a habit of tiring yourself out, don't you?”

“Where am I?” Ruby kept her voice calm, though it quivered and threatened to break. “What have you done with my friends? What happened to Haven? It can't have-”

The  _ click  _ of Adam loosing his sword throttled Ruby's barrage of questions. “Wouldn't you like to know?” He drew Wilt from Blush with a series of mechanical whirs and scrapes, deliberately dragging out the motion. The sounds of metal and Dust mechanisms were familiar to Ruby. She'd spent enough time in armories to guess at the origins of some. As for the unknowns, she'd seen a diverse enough array of modifications for her imagination to scare the hell out of her.

“You'll be happy to know that the school is still standing. Your friends are fine.” Adam twirled his blade lazily as he paced back and forth in front of the cell, a predator savoring his wounded quarry. “Seems they're good at getting people to fight for them...even die for them,” he said. He ran the red steel idly across the bars, rattling them as he spoke. “Typical humans. Typical human-lovers. They take what they need and throw you away when you've served your purpose.”

Ruby clenched her jaw as the rattling aggravated her headache once more. “What would you know about having friends? When my team gets here they'll-”

“They'll what?” Adam spat, shoving his sword through the bars. He held the tip within an inch of Ruby's heart, perfectly still in mid-thrust. “Save you? The way they saved Beacon? The way they saved...what was her name again? That idiot girl who thought she could challenge Cinder?”

Whether it was fear or prudence that kept Ruby from moving at swordpoint, she cast it aside at the mention of Pyrrha. She let loose a cry as she circled around the sword. If Adam's weapon was trapped between the bars, she just needed to seize his arm and pull him forward, knock him out. She drew on her Aura for a burst of speed.

Acid rose in the back of her throat as her soul grasped at nothing. Why couldn't she use her Semblance? Where was her Aura? In her speed state time would seem to slow down around her. Instead she felt sluggish, weighed down by her own body, as Adam brought Blush around with his other hand. He leveled the sheath-gun directly at Ruby and fired.

The sound roared in Ruby's ears for a split second, ringing even as the earthen walls absorbed it. She took a step back, then another, before collapsing back on the burlap sheets, hitting her head against the cell wall. The shot had been point blank, and without her Aura it would kill her.

Yet there was no pain. She gulped in several deep breaths, waiting for blackness to claim her at last.

It didn't. The smell of ignited Dust suffused the air, mixed with burning fabric. She looked down to see her cape trapped between her legs, a ragged hole blasted in it. The edges singed from the impact, as did a small crater blasted in the ground beneath her.

Adam smirked. “That was a warning shot. I didn't have to miss.” With a few scrapes and a click, he undid the lock on the door and pushed open. The question of the creaking hinges was answered by the sickening slam as it shut behind him. Ruby was trapped with the man who had tormented Blake, weaponless and depleted of Aura.

She felt minor pressure on her throat then. That metal thing she'd found there was constricting, restricting her breathing and making her lightheaded. She grasped it and pulled. Useless. It seemed to grow tighter for her effort, spreading darkness around the edges of her vision.

“How does it feel?” Adam's voice floated to Ruby through her choking haze, drawing venom from a smile. “That's a slave collar from the Schnee mines. Try using your Aura, if you want to asphyxiate.” He watched her squirm on the scratchy burlap for a moment longer. With a fluid sweep of his arms, he stabbed Wilt and Blush into the ground flanking the door and advanced on Ruby.

The collar finally seemed to relax as Adam put one foot up on the bed frame. “Did your little princess tell you about these? How my Faunus brothers and sisters died clawing at their throats for the sin of wanting to go free?”

Ruby gulped precious lungfuls of the stagnant air. “Weiss...no, she couldn't have known,” she gasped. “She would never-”

Fire lanced through her cheek as Adam struck her with the back of his hand, throwing her onto her side again. His wicked grin had faded into a simmering grimace. “Everyone knows!” he barked. “They teach it in your fucking schools! Only criminals work in the mines. Is that what they tell you?”

Ruby hated being shouted at, hated even more that she was being asked these questions. Why did she have to answer for any of it? Would it matter if she could? She felt her eyes grow warm with tears she struggled to hold back.

“Shoplifting,” Adam breathed. “Truancy. Fucking  _ jaywalking.  _ A Faunus takes one step out of line and they get worked to death like a common animal. That's what your teammate grows rich off of. That's where your ammunition comes from. Every shot you fire is carved from our backs.”

“I'm sorry!” Ruby cried, tears spilling out as she shivered below her captor. “I'm sorry...I want to be a Huntress so I can make the world right! Blake was in the White Fang...she wants to help too! Please…”

“Ah, Blake. Blake Belladonna.” The smile returned to Adam's face without a hint of mirth. “My only love. The one that got away.” He glared down at Ruby, appraising the sobbing girl from head to toe. “You'd be about her age,” Adam purred. “When she pledged herself to me. A shame she's forgotten.”

Ruby failed to take Adam's meaning. He could do as he pleased to her; she was team leader. It was her job to protect her friends. They'd do the same for her. She returned his hateful gaze at the mention of Blake. “You can't touch her,” she whispered. Her voice gained strength as she spoke. “She's not alone anymore. You are! Once my team finds me, you're finished. We stick together, no matter what!”

Adam tamped down the flash of anger, channeling it into something much worse. He laughed. “That's exactly why you'll never win,” he said, sitting down on the bed as Ruby scurried glaring into the corner. “You rely on your friends to save you. But divided…” He bared his teeth in a hungry grin. “You break. One by one, until each of you is alone with your fear. I already broke your sister at Beacon. Blake will have her day. Weiss will have hers. You're just one more step on my path to vengeance.”

The words hung between them, dragging Ruby's spirit into the hole through which her Aura had disappeared. She clung to her happy memories - her teammates, her friends, her family. No matter what happened, they would be waiting for her once she escaped. She just had to persevere.

Adam cracked his knuckles and stood up again. “But who said vengeance couldn't be fun?”

He was on her before Ruby could guess at his intent.

She screamed as Adam struck, seizing her by one thigh and yanking her across the bed. His fingers dug into that group of muscles that somehow always tickled, injecting a laugh into Ruby's screams that did not belong there at all. 

Though she'd trained daily and packed on a little more upper body muscle since Beacon, Ruby was assailed by memories of her humiliating defeat at Mountain Glenn where, deprived of Crescent Rose, some White Fang mooks had proven equal to her untrained punches. Those had been footsoldiers; driven by a sense that they were a part of something greater, but tasked only with knocking her out for the boss to deal with.

The man tearing at her clothes harbored no such idealism and answered to no such authority. Hate had led Adam to assist in the destruction of Beacon. Obsession had claimed Yang's arm. Mere hunger confronted Ruby now, all the more terrifying in its naked greed.

Ruby slapped and scratched at Adam as he shredded her tights and yanked her combat skirt roughly up her toned torso, exposing black panties dotted with red roses. “Let me go! I didn’t do anything! You can’t-”

“Can’t I?” Adam growled, pulling himself up over Ruby and pinning her thrashing limbs to the bed. “Stop me, then.”

Her shoulders were screaming under Adam’s weight. Ruby shrieked and squirmed under him, digging deep within herself for the tiniest scrap of Aura. Hope flickered within her, horribly brief, at a small surge of energy through her limbs. Useless. What little Aura she could channel only made her vibrate under Adam’s grip. His strength was matched by the collar at her neck, digging into her skin as it tightened again in response to her smothered Semblance.

Just as quickly as her body had come to life Ruby could feel it weakening. She felt as tired as it was possible to feel with her heart hammering in her chest, barely able to draw quick, shallow breaths below the strangling collar. Her eyes fluttered; her sight tore at its edges. She gasped and clumsily threw her body up as soon as she felt Adam letting go of one shoulder.

He had relented only to reach down and loosen his pants. The buckle on his left leg clicked as he shoved them down. The next moment Ruby felt Adam grab her around the ribs and flip her over. With the collar clamping down on her throat, she could barely cry out at the treatment. As she shifted her head weakly to keep from being suffocated against the burlap, Ruby yelped as Adam’s big hand came down hard across her ass. Her tears soaked the uncomfortable bedclothes and blurred her vision as he smacked her in the same place again. Then a third time. Then a fourth. The black leather of his gloves stung, then numbed her skin by the time he tired of this, by the time he finally shoved his fingers into the waistband of her panties and pulled down.

Ruby felt the still air of the cell creep across her most sensitive places, teasing raw flesh as the angry red marks on her rear ignited once more. She bit her lip as Adam grabbed her where he’d spanked her, as he kneaded her ass and slid his fingers between her legs. Her breath hitched in her throat as he stroked her slit up and down, dipping a little further inside her with each pass.

Somehow this violation was gentler than any that had come before. Over the course of seconds that passed like hours, the collar had relented as well. It was a perverse reward, and Ruby couldn’t tell when she’d stopped resisting and earned it. She sobbed into the sheets, as much from terror as from confusion. For quite without meaning to, she found herself rocking her hips, pushing back against Adam, driving him ever deeper inside her. She knew this feeling. She’d experimented with it, wanted it...but not from him. Never from him. Yet there she was, face down below a terrorist as she fucked herself on one finger...then two, the sudden intrusion spreading her wider still. Ruby felt herself growing wetter, heard Adam’s fingers slipping between her folds as her body yielded to him.

Adam finally shifted his weight and leaned across her. Through the fabric of her skirt she could feel his cock pressing against her back, long and hard as he bent down to whisper in her ear.

“Looks like Little Rose lost her thorns.” His breath was hot upon her face and set her lower back tingling with its closeness. “All that hero talk, wasted. If only your team could see what a little whore you really are.” Adam let his hand linger on Ruby’s neck, resting it just above the collar and weaving his fingers into her hair. “Beg.”

Ruby strained to look back at him, her silver eyes raw from crying. “What-”   


Another smack rained down on her ass. “Please!” she screamed without thinking.

“Please what?”

She could feel the shaft of Adam's cock warm against her nethers, feel herself leaking onto him. Gods, she'd never even seen one in real life before - still couldn't, pressed facedown into her burlap hell. “G-give it to me…”

“You're a big girl. Talk like one!” Adam increased his grip on Ruby's neck, almost as tight as the collar had been.

“F-f-f-fuck...fuck me…” Even with her virginity about to be stolen, the words felt filthy in Ruby's mouth. Coupled with her quivering voice, she barely recognized herself saying them.

Adam laughed again. "You know those awful jokes about bull Faunus, Ruby?" He barely had to adjust his grip for his leather gloves to tug at her hair. "Let's say stereotypes exist for a reason." He slid his length back and forth across her dripping pussy, savoring her; then, spreading her with his free hand, he pushed himself inside.

Ruby moaned as she felt herself opened, then invaded. Adam was broader than anything she'd tried down there, and in an instant she found he was longer too. He sheathed his cock inside Ruby in one demanding second, filling her to the brim before his hips even touched her ass. Then a little more.

She felt like she was being split apart. Her knuckles went white on the sheets as Adam pulled back, then filled her again, reaching deeper with every thrust. The pressure drew short, quick gasps from Ruby as Adam slammed into her again and again. His cock set her lower lips tingling, battered her insides until she felt they'd bruise.

Ruby whimpered, moaned, soaked the burlap sheets with tears as Adam fucked her. She thought she’d felt powerless without Crescent Rose, but now she was deprived of even her Semblance to provide an escape. The only ounce of resistance she could muster was keeping her face pressed into the bed, hiding her tears, her shame, trying and failing to detach herself from the feeling of Adam’s length stabbing into her body.

Adam had been at this for a few minutes when he made a fist in Ruby’s hair, plunged into her, held himself hilted as he pulled her head up off the bed. “I'm close. You're taking it all,” he snarled. “Every drop. Complain and I'll make you eat it.” His cock throbbed inside her as if to drive the point home.

Iron crept into Ruby's mouth as she bit her lip again, too hard. Gods, she'd thought he couldn't stretch her any further. But Adam kept hitting that one spot inside her, radiating a warm ache through her gut. It hurt, hurt like the dentist examining too far into her throat. But the pain was inescapable, and not just because Adam held her in place. As before she felt her hips shifting, pressing against her captor, taking him as deep as he could go.

As Ruby surrendered to the crescendo of Adam's strokes, she found herself pushing harder and harder against him. It was like twisting around as far as she could to crack her back; the warm pressure of his thrusts was hurting her, yet scratched an itch that would hurt more to leave unsatisfied.

But try as she might, no amount of thrusting back could satisfy this insane urge. It was like her most precious, sensitive spot was moving deeper inside her gut, growing larger and larger, a tangled bundle of nerves just waiting to-

Ruby made a harsh sound somewhere between a sob and a groan. The warm knot inside her had come loose, numbing her abdomen and setting her legs shaking. She felt her pussy squeezing Adam, clinging jealously to his manhood as her muscles gripped him and held tight. The scrape of burlap on her face stung her, but she ground herself into it; anything to push against the world around her, stretch herself as far as she could go, lest the orgasm surging through her burst out and leave her body entirely.

Adam wasn't far behind. His breathing grew erratic as he balled his fist in Ruby's hair and pulled her almost to a kneeling position. He kept his other hand fixed on her hip, feeling himself grow harder inside her hungry tightness as spikes of pleasure lanced through him. His cock pulsed inside Ruby, fucking his essence into her hot depths.

He stayed buried inside her for several seconds more before gingerly withdrawing, pulling a ragged inward breath from Ruby.

It was Adam’s first time doing anything like this. After Blake fled, there were nights he’d dreamed about doing it to her. Truth be told, he hadn’t anticipated taking the young leader of Team RWBY before that, or even at all. If the raid on Haven had gone differently, it might well have been Blake instead. But if it meant one step closer to that traitor, Adam would take it.

Little Rose would have to be diversion enough in the meantime.

Ruby lay facedown on the bed, her body quaking - how much from crying, how much from the aftershocks of her orgasm, Adam couldn’t tell. Watching her now brought less satisfaction than he thought he might have felt. It wasn’t guilt that made Adam shake his head and turn away. It was the sheer ease with which she’d crumbled. This was the resolve of the leader Blake had chosen to follow? Now that the pleasure of the act was fading, Adam was acutely aware of the annoyances he’d blocked out. His clothes always stung him a little if he got dressed right after sex, and it was too damn stuffy in here to begin with.

And damn it, he wished Ruby would just stop crying.

“Save your tears. They’ll need to last you to the coast.” He didn’t care if Ruby was listening, but something about leaving without saying anything struck him as wrong.

The door creaked shut, the lock clicked, and Adam’s footsteps receded down the corridor. Ruby was alone again, frozen and shivering in her submissive position. Her ass still smarted from Adam’s palm, her crotch still ached from where he’d raped her. Something warm tickled her as it ran slowly down her thigh, soaked into her panties. Adam hadn’t bothered to pull them more than halfway down to her knees.

She didn’t bother pulling them up. Ruby let herself collapse on the poor excuse for bedsheets, convulsing with sobs as she wrapped herself in her cloak. It smelled vaguely like spent Dust. On other nights she could lose herself in the scent, dream of Crescent Rose and the Grimm she’d slain, the battles before and the battles to come.

The dreams didn’t come this time. As the candle in the corner guttered out, Ruby doubted they’d ever come again.


	2. Languish

She was moving, or the world was moving. Ruby’s eyes fluttered open as the world blurred into life around her for the second time in as many days. It was easier to sit up this time, especially now that the burlap sheets had gone. That was Ruby’s first clue that she was somewhere new.

It was cooler here - not cold, but she pulled her cloak tight around her nonetheless. The room was brighter, a clean fluorescent glow providing more than adequate light but compounding the starkness of her surroundings. Ruby found herself on a metal slab in a room of colorless steel and right angles, larger than her underground cell but nonetheless a prison. The table - for without sheets it didn’t count as a bed - vibrated faintly, as did the floor. The wall too, when Ruby touched it.

The entire room shivered, throwing Ruby off balance right as she stood to pace around it. She gasped as the faint hum of a Bullhead’s engines drifted through the walls. They were in the air, and moving fast. But to where? Why? How long had they been flying?

These questions fed each other, building a bridge over the gaps in Ruby’s memory, over the shadowy events that had brought her here from-

Her vision swam, and she fought back tears again. She knew what had happened to her before coming here. She remembered all too well what Adam had done to her. The scars were whispering to her again as she learned more and more of her condition.

Her cloak and her combat skirt were covered in bits of loose string shed by her burlap sheets, tainted by their coarseness. Her skirt was rumpled and torn in places, and she could feel her hair was messed up. An instinctive reach for her pocket to check for her Scroll was futile, for she had lost it sometime before her imprisonment. Her neck...yes, the slave collar was still there. She felt around inside herself for any trace of her Aura. Whatever the collar did to suppress it wasn't budging.

Without her Aura to speed things along Ruby had only her body's natural healing to fall back on. The pain would fade much slower than she was used to, but it would fade.

She winced. Between her legs she still ached from Adam's abuse.

It had to go away. Eventually, it had to. That thought alone could guide her back into the merciful blackness of sleep.

\--

The hiss and rattle of a door opening wrenched Ruby out of her slumber. She was growing used to such rude awakenings. Her legs shook as she stood, but she managed to maintain her composure as she walked through the open door. The passageway she emerged into was dim, the air full of ozone. She gagged a little on the scent of burning. There wasn’t any smoke about, which ruled out a fire, but Ruby figured that the insulation must have been in serious disrepair. A breeze from nearby suggested a reprieve from the smell, if not a way out.

But a way out it was. There was an open hatch letting in air and light right around the corner.

Adam stalked into view beyond that.

Ruby froze as her kidnapper - her rapist - approached her from the other end of the passageway. She fingered the collar at her neck, imagining it to be constricting already as a warning; with her other hand, she fumbled at her back for the weapon she knew was not there. She was torn between fight and flight, powerless to do either.

“Don’t bother.”

Though Ruby had attempted to suppress the defeated voice whispering poison into her heart, Adam’s voice reinvigorated it. She swallowed, forcing herself to look directly at him. “What now?” she said, her voice breaking.

“What do you mean, what now?” It was strange, but Adam sounded more exasperated than triumphant.

“We came here for a reason, didn’t we? If you wanted to r-rape me, or kill me, you could have just kept me in that cell.” Ruby held her ground, waiting for an answer.

None came. It was then that she noticed a stained gray cloth in Adam's left hand - no, not a cloth, those didn't have buttons. It was a shirt covered in some dark stain, and he was using it to wipe his blade clean.

“Adam...whose is that? What did you do?” Ruby was caught in a cycle of questions she did not want the answers to. The Huntress in her reminded her that it was better to know where the monsters were than to merely know they were about.

“I had a pilot get us here. Then I covered our tracks.”

“Oh.” The casual confession to murder didn’t shake Ruby as much as she thought it should have. She turned from Adam and looked out the hatch to see where they’d landed. They had come down in a bamboo forest somewhere far from Haven. The morning chill crept in and made Ruby shiver, as did the thought that her team was miles away. Hundreds, perhaps. “Where are we?” she squeaked.

Adam tossed the shirt aside and sheathed Wilt. “Somewhere neither your people nor mine can find us.” He brushed past Ruby, the bump of his body against hers making her stomach twist.

So it was true. They could be anywhere in Mistral right now, and without her Scroll there was no way to track her team down. The thought threatened tears as she watched Adam saunter down the exit ramp and step into the forest. There was nothing but trees as far as Ruby could see, filtering weak sunlight from a gray sky. She was alone with a madman, deprived of her Aura to escape with and her weapon to fight with. What if Adam decided to rape her again? What if he left her to the Grimm? What if-

“Ruby.”

Adam was holding a hand out to her. It was the last thing she expected to see him do, an offer of assistance from the author of her suffering. An embodiment of terror waited for her to accept its mercy. Ruby did not understand, and she understood even less when she walked slowly forward and put her hand in his.

Here at the end of the world, in a trackless, boundless forest of fear, Ruby clung to the one thing that she knew had decided to lead her somewhere. Even monsters needed shelter.

\--

The forest grew vaguely brighter, its yellows and greens gaining confidence in their own vibrant hues. It was the only way Ruby could be certain that they hadn't been walking for hours. They had walked for only thirty minutes, but time meant little to Ruby.

She was a mouse devoting its waking life to learning the movements of a nearby cat. Adam hadn't looked at her once during the journey. She supposed he didn't need to. His hand was firm in hers, though not too tight; guiding, without imprisoning. Almost protective.

Ruby shook her head. Not protective. Without Crescent Rose or her Semblance, he didn't need to hold her very hard at all. He could turn her loose and hunt her down for sport if he-

“We're here.”

Adam had led her to a small house built in the Mistral style, a wooden frame and paper walls forming a shelter that itself sought shelter in the shadow of a large rock face looming up behind it. It was well maintained for being so deep in the wilderness. Ruby cocked her head, confused. “This...is where you live?”

She shivered at a low chuckle from Adam. “These days. Not even the White Fang know about it.” He made a disdainful sound, striding toward the door. “What's left of them, anyway.”

Adam's remark clicked with Ruby in a way she'd missed before. “You said we'd be somewhere your people and mine wouldn't find us,” she said. “Are...are you not in the White Fang anymore?”

He’d just started sliding the door open when Ruby asked her question. He stopped halfway, his back to his captive, staring into the doorway as if a stack of corpses rotted beyond it. Ruby saw his hand clench tight on the doorframe, heard wood creak under his grip.

Then he relaxed, sliding the door the rest of the way. “The army I led has been beaten.” His voice was thick with restraint. “Laid low by those fools following the Belladonna family. Even now your teammate torments me.” He beckoned for her to follow him into the house. “Come on.”

Ruby hesitated. “But if they weren’t tracking us-”

“ _ Get in here.” _

She was moving almost without realizing it, her legs carrying her into the house. Ruby looked around at the darkened interior, felt the bamboo floors creak under her boots, heard the woven grass mats muffling Adam’s steps as he went to another room through a door on the left. It was austere, but clean - a far cry from the hole Adam had raped her in before.

A flash of light from a room on the right caught her eye. Ruby checked behind her; Adam was still out of sight. She prayed that the mats would be as kind to her as they were to Adam as she tiptoed over to the half-open door.

It was dark in that room, but Ruby could just see the muted light from outside reflecting off of something - glass, perhaps, a window or a mirror.

She swallowed a yelp as a single yellow eye stared back at her.

In the time it took her to catch her breath Ruby noticed the eye wasn't blinking. Nor was it moving at all. It seemed...flat, actually.

Curiosity usurped fear. Ruby slid back the door without daring to breathe, lest she miss a fatal creaking sound. The light of the Mistral jungle morning spilled into the dark room.

Blake stared back at her.

The picture hanging on the wall was of a younger version of Ruby's teammate. Her amber eyes were brighter in this photograph, more innocent, though she had the cautious expression the present Blake tended to default to - vaguely surprised, on guard, yet concerned nonetheless. 

Cold nausea crept through Ruby as she moved toward the picture, noticing now its surroundings. It was an obsessive mockery of the shrines many Mistralites kept in their homes. Blake hung above a small table holding a bowl of wilted plants that might have once been nightshade. Next to that was a wooden incense box streaked with ashes. Ruby picked it up and held it to her nose. Lavender. Just like the perfume Blake preferred to wear. As she set the box down she noticed a battered silver locket at one end of the table. She took it and flipped it open.

Blake smiled up from one side of the locket. Opposite her were curled strands of black that could only be her hair.

Ruby realized her hands were shaking so badly she had to clasp the locket tightly in them to keep from dropping it. This was the man who had abducted her. This was the depth of his fixation on her friend. Who knew what else he'd do to her if-

“Put it down.”

Ruby made a sound like a whipped bat. She whirled to see Adam behind her, arms crossed, blocking the doorway. “I-I was just-”

“Interfering with things that don’t concern you.” He slid the door closed behind him, plunging the windowless room into near darkness. “How very like you.”

She was quicker to action this time than she had been in the cell. As soon as the light faded Ruby threw herself to the side, taking the impact with her shoulder and rolling to Adam’s side. Adrenaline coursed through Ruby as she sprang to her feet. She had dodged him without the use of her Semblance. A few minutes in the room had been enough to memorize its layout. The door was just to her right, and if she could get through it she’d have the whole jungle to hide in. Her heart soared as she pushed against the flat surface and felt it give. This was it. The door slid open, letting a small ray of light into the room.

A clutch at Ruby’s throat sent her heart spiraling back down into the pit it had sunk into. Adam had seized her cape and jerked hard. Ruby lost her balance, seized by an awful moment of weightlessness as she fell.

Adam’s powerful hands caught her around the shoulders and dragged her back in front of the shrine. “Didn’t they teach you at Beacon? Faunus can see perfectly in the dark.”

The taunt cast Ruby’s mind back to Oobleck’s lecture about the battle at Fort Castle. Of course, she remembered dimly as Adam threw her to the floor. General Lagune's arrogant night attack on the Faunus had cost him the battle.

The failed escape would cost Ruby what little healing she'd managed since that night in the cell. Again Adam tore at her panties, ripping them now as he'd ripped away her tights. Ruby sniffled as he pinned her wrists to the mat. The fight went out of her quicker this time. Better to let him take what he wanted than provoke him.

She kept her sobs as quiet as possible as Adam forced himself inside her again, this time not bothering to make her wet and ease his entry. Tears trickled down her cheeks as Adam thrust savagely in and out, growling curses under labored breaths. It  _ hurt  _ \- his terrific length tested the limits of her hole, stretching and rubbing her unprepared walls.

She did soon grow wetter as he fucked her. His cock stoked sparks that simmered and set a fire burning low in her belly. Yet still it stung, and Ruby was left to wonder how much her body had accepted him and how much she'd bled to accommodate his demand.

There it was again. Despite the pain, despite the hate that kept her pinioned to the dusty floor, a tantalizing numbness was spreading from Ruby's core out to the rest of her body. She was panting now, moaning against her efforts to stay silent. Little squeaks and cries accompanied Adam's strokes, whipping him to fuck her harder and faster. Though her legs were spread beneath him, Ruby found herself dragging them back together, wrapping them around Adam's own where he'd shoved his pants down.

It was wrong, it hurt, and yet Ruby had latched on to the feeling of being filled. Something hateful inside her craved the pain, the humiliation. Her own silver-eyed gaze had rendered her helpless. She had let herself be separated from her team. She was removed from the field when they needed her most, and her own recklessness was the cause.

The world was full of monsters. The Grimm certainly did not hesitate. Brutality like Adam's awaited any Huntress who got careless.

And beneath the agony of the raw, bloody attack on her secret place, it felt  _ good. _ Adam's length spread thick heat through her pelvis, numbing her nerves only to set them slowly afire again. Low, licking at the edges of her senses, until all at once they flared up again.

Ruby yelped, throwing her arms and legs around Adam and locking him tight as he reached her innermost limits. He himself had reached his own, grunting, sighing, slipping into that familiar, irregular throb inside Ruby's cunt as he seeded her once more. She clamped down on him and made a sound low in her throat that was almost a purr.

When Adam withdrew this time, Ruby whimpered again. The high of the orgasm wrapped her in a tingly blanket, yet left that familiar abyss of horror in its wake. Intellectually she knew that what had been done to her was awful, horrible. As Adam stood and stalked off she could see the bloody mess between her legs in the light of the still-new day, feel herself stinging where she never should have.

But she whimpered for another reason too. In the wake of Adam slaking his hunger, she felt her own growing. She did not understand the emptiness inside her, but neither could she deny it.

Blake stared down at her from the portrait above the shrine. Ruby gazed weakly into her friend's eyes, wondering what she would think if she could see what her leader had been reduced to. Blake had once tried to see the best in a cruel world. It had been her weakness. It had almost killed her.

Here in this forgotten corner of Mistral, alone with the most dangerous man on Remnant, it was the only thing keeping Ruby alive.


	3. Awake

The house was an open prison. There were no locks on the doors, no barriers to Ruby’s escape, but none of that mattered. Adam had shown her his Scroll, shown her the tracking software keyed to Ruby’s collar. Wherever she went in the forest, Adam could find her, and she was going nowhere fast.

Three days passed that way in tears and pain. Adam disappeared in the mornings for reasons unknown. He threw her the Atlesian MREs he had stashed in a chest when it was time to eat. He raped Ruby nightly, or simply when she dared to complain. And the days turned into a week, and then two. If Ruby weren’t tracking them with scratches hidden beneath her futon, she’d have lost her sense of time entirely.

She was losing her sense of just about everything else. She’d given up testing her Aura when the collar had clamped down on her throat hard enough to make her pass out. When Adam had caught her running as fast as her mundane legs could carry her, he’d dragged her home and burned her clothes. And her dreams were almost as cruel as Adam himself, filled with visions of salvation. Weiss, plunging the forest into winter for miles around and shattering Adam’s frozen body. Blake, letting him destroy a shadow clone before stabbing him from behind. Yang, her hair and eyes ablaze as she struck his head from his shoulders. It was worse than not dreaming at all.

It was always the same, and yet not.

One hungry morning, Ruby had wandered close to the house and found a thicket brimming with berries. She’d brought a bucket full of them back to the house, relieved that she could satisfy her hunger with something other than military food, and left it on a table in the living area.

Adam hadn’t raped her that night. The bucket was emptier the following morning.

She was this man’s slave. But for the first time in weeks, Ruby found agency. Control. Relief. If the beast could be sated, it could be tolerated. Perhaps even tamed.

\--

After a couple of weeks Adam started coming back with more food. Ruby could scarcely believe her eyes at the sight of him walking back to the house, a deer slung across his back. It was a welcome change, though surely due to the MREs running low. They weren’t intended to last more than three weeks as one’s main source of nutrition anyway. Ruby couldn't help but salivate at the smell of Adam making a real dinner, and she made sure to clean every inch of it once their silent meal was through. Adam seemed surprised at first, though he grunted his approval before going straight to bed. Even so, Ruby sensed a change in her captor.

The third night of real food, Ruby worked up the courage to look up from her venison and rice and test that change. “Adam?”

“Hmm.” He didn't meet her eyes.

She knew she had to choose her words carefully.

“Where do you go each day?”

Silence at the table. Adam stared at Ruby from behind his mask. She shifted in her chair, suddenly self-conscious. It might have been silly of her - naked these two weeks since Adam had destroyed her outfit - but she felt as if she were being looked at for the first time. She didn't know what Adam was thinking, but she felt he was really scrutinizing her, searching for something deeper than the object he'd treated her as.

“Business.”

“White Fang business?”

“None of your business.” That was that.

They finished their meal without talking. Adam pulled out his Scroll and flicked through a few screens, scowling.

Ruby tried again. “How long am I going to be here?”

Adam growled and raised his Scroll hand as if to throw it against the wall. Ruby yelped and cringed, knowing what was coming next.

It didn’t come. Adam stopped himself halfway through the motion, recognizing how counterproductive it would be to lose his only link to civilization. He set his Scroll down smartly on the table and rose. “The Fang are finished. Declawed by your friend Blake.” He stalked off in the direction of the shrine. “I was going to ransom you once I got back to them. But there isn’t a them to go back to. Now...I’m stuck with you.” He slid the door shut behind him and didn’t come out.

Ruby sat at the uncleared table, staring at her empty bowl and thinking this over. On one hand, it seemed Adam was just as alone as she was. There was no more need to keep her prisoner. On the other, there was now no reason to let her go. No way home.

She thought she’d cry more, but she must have been running out of tears.

\--

Adam didn’t bother her that night; didn’t even leave the shrine, as far as Ruby could see. It was still dark when she woke up, unable to sleep for a stomachache. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but around five in the morning she finally gave up and got silently out of bed.

It was easy to find her way to the small hot spring behind the house in the predawn gloom. She had bathed there regularly since being brought here, and the way was familiar to her now. Amazing what one could adapt to.

She came to the edge of the water and dipped one toe in. Perfect. She couldn’t see the steam rising from it in the dark, but it clung, wet and chilly, to her skin, encouraging her to slide in. She sighed as she was enveloped by the hot water, her one source of comfort in her captivity. The only downside was that the collar was waterproof. She’d checked.

Ruby closed her eyes and let herself be lost in the sensations, good and not so good. She rested her head on a rock behind her, a little softer now that her hair had grown out some more. She had a bit of a headache, but it was more of a nuisance than a true concern. Her skin prickled and purified with the heat. She squirmed and scratched between her legs - she hadn’t had the chance to shave the way she preferred to. And the nagging ache in her stomach had failed to disappear into the soothing water; had, in fact, grown and curdled inside her, creeping up her torso until-

Ruby put her hand to her mouth and bolted, splashing loudly as she scampered out of the spring. Though she hadn’t had access to her Semblance in weeks, she was naturally quick enough to run to some nearby bushes and throw up. Her throat burned with last night’s dinner, and the nausea simmered in her gut as she panted and wiped her mouth. Ruby shivered, damp in the early morning chill, and crept back over to the hot spring.

In minutes, she was desecrating the bushes again.

Where had this come from? She hadn’t eaten anything bad; Atlesian MREs had a notoriously long shelf life. If Adam’s abuse hadn’t sickened her, she didn’t see why his easing up would. She’d been here for a little over two weeks now, and-

A cold bolt of terror froze Ruby in the steaming spring. Two weeks. Her period had been due not long after the Haven raid. Yet she couldn’t remember bleeding except when Adam attacked her.

And now it was before sunrise, and she was throwing up.

“No,” she whispered to herself, shaking her head and looking down at her abdomen. She put a hand there and swallowed another wave of bile. She couldn’t be. What would Adam think? What would he do?

What would she do?

\--

It only took a few more hours to answer that question. Just a few hours of pacing the empty house, running outside to throw up, only able to keep down water from the nearby well. The vomiting had passed but the malaise remained, settling over her like the steely clouds that blanketed the forest.

There was no escape now. Even if Ruby somehow managed to break free of Adam, she was still miles from civilization. Maybe hundreds of miles. How could she get to a doctor by then? Without her Aura, how could her body support a baby?

And what would Adam do?

Wherever Ruby looked, the trees stretched out to the horizon and beyond, an endless sea of green drowning her hope. She would never see her team again, she realized. Nor her friends, nor her family. Weiss, Blake, Yang, Dad, Uncle Qrow, Jaune, Nora, Ren, Oscar...gone. She’d chosen to go on this quest, chosen to fight for a brighter world when her old life had been ripped away from her. Yet now it had happened again, and this time she had neither her weapon nor her Aura to protect her. Even her clothes had been burned.

Ruby stood shivering at the top of the cliff, naked save for the awful collar, her silver eyes dull and dry. Crying hadn’t done her any good, nor would it ever. She thought of her mother's grave at the other end of the world. Summer Rose slept at the top of a cliff rather like the one Ruby stood on now. She wondered whether someone would go to the trouble of making a grave for her. Would it be right where they found her? Or perhaps she too would be carried back to the summit, as her father had done for her mother.   
  
That would be nice.

She had struggled to keep her head above water, to avoid sinking into hopelessness. Her struggle had brought her high above the forest that was her prison, the highest point for miles around.

She had risen only to fall.

One moment Ruby perched on the edge of the sheer cliff face, still in the gentle noon air. The next she was plummeting down, racing toward the ground to end her loneliness.

As she closed her eyes, Ruby thought she saw a flash of red and black coming up toward her, but paid it no mind.

\--

Gods, did Ruby’s head hurt.

She was warmer than she’d been in weeks. She blinked slowly as the world bled back into her senses, revealing the source of her warmth bit by bit.

Thick cotton blankets were wrapped around her, keeping her in a toasty bundle on the futon. She was in a room she didn’t recognize, perhaps elsewhere in the house where Adam had forbidden her from going. A Dust-powered space heater was humming gently in the center of the room, and the paper across the window let in plenty of light to see by. At her side she saw a tea tray with a kettle and two cups, a pair of combat boots, and a neatly folded outfit in red and black, not unlike the one she’d had.

Adam was reclining in a corner beyond that, arms crossed.

Instead of terror, Ruby simply felt confused. Perhaps it was because she was only half-awake. “...Adam?” she mumbled. “What’s going on?”

The sound of her voice startled him, and he sprang into a crouch, ready for an enemy. He relaxed when none appeared. He rose and walked to her side, crouching down to feel her forehead. “You’re awake.”

Ruby cocked her head, confused. “Yeah...I got that far. I just wish I knew how I’d gotten here.” She was having trouble remembering exactly how. She had a memory of falling, of something rushing up to catch her, and before that…

In a split second Ruby stripped the blankets off of her, hands flying to her stomach. “I’m...Adam, I-”   


She stopped. She was wearing black silk pajamas, which she knew she hadn’t been wearing that morning. “Adam...you dressed me?”

“After I caught you.”

His response confirmed a suspicion Ruby hadn’t dared entertain. “You caught me?” Adam nodded, but Ruby still didn’t understand. “But why...I mean, I thought you hated me...or I was your prisoner, or…” She was speaking faster and faster, the way she did when she was nervous. And there was no sense keeping it from Adam, if he would find out one way or another. “Adam...I think I’m-”

“Pregnant.”

“What?” Ruby stared at him. How did he know?

“I saw you throwing up when I was leaving this morning,” Adam said. “I took your clothes, so I would have noticed if you’d gotten your period. It wasn’t hard to infer.” He hadn’t advanced on Ruby, hadn’t made to stop her when she’d started to panic.

“Then…” Ruby hung her head, tears springing to her eyes. Where had they been when she’d tried to kill herself? “What are you going to do with me?”

Adam surprised her in an entirely new way. He put a hand on Ruby’s shoulder; awkward, as if he wasn’t used to showing comfort, but the sentiment was clear. “Well, for starters, I took that collar off.”

Ruby shot a hand to her throat, expecting the familiar hardness of the collar and finding instead her own warm flesh. It felt alien to her after so long wearing the thing. She felt inside herself for her Aura. It was small, but it was there, and now that the collar was gone it would return. Her situation had gone from dire to almost comforting in the space of hours, and she couldn’t help but giggle at the turnaround. “Thank you.” Then, confused: “Why?”

“The same reason I got you new clothes. The same reason I was lucky to come back just in time to save you.” Adam sighed, letting his hand fall from Ruby’s shoulder as he sat next to her.

“I lost the White Fang because I was impulsive. Unpredictable. Obsessive, even,” Adam said, casting a faraway glance to the side. “I gambled everything in my life on revenge, on selfishness, and lost it all. All except you,” he said, looking again at Ruby.

She thought she could hear his voice shake behind the unreadable plain of the mask. “I’ve done terrible things, Ruby, to you and your teammates. Hell, to the world. I've killed, burned, raped in the name of what I told myself was justice. And look what's become of the world. Of me. Of you.”

This was a vulnerability Ruby had never dared dream might exist in Adam. The man who had spirited her away to this unknown corner of Remnant no longer seemed the heartless terror that had ripped her world away from her, no longer seemed capable of hurting her the way he had. His confession lodged in her heart and set it aching, threatening to burst there where she sat up. Without really thinking about it, she moved a hand up to cover Adam's, resting her fingertips between his large fingers.

“I've lost...everything. It's my fault. And I thought that taking everything from you could somehow replace it. It hasn't.” Adam lowered his gaze, took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Then he met Ruby's eyes again. “Ruby Rose. I still wish to build a new world...but one I can be proud of. One that doesn't have to be built on the ashes of the old world. And I want to build it for you, and for our child. It's the least I can do to make things right.” Conviction had slipped back into his voice, the fierce determination that had driven him to kill and destroy now serving as the foundation for a new chapter of his life.

Of Ruby's, too, she realized.

How quickly the monster had been tamed. How radically Adam's cruelty had burnt itself out, Ruby thought. When had the change taken place? When she'd picked berries for him? When she'd started keeping a tidy house? When had he seen in her something more than the toy he'd stolen from Haven?

Adam stiffened as Ruby threw her arms around him and buried her face in his chest. In this moment she knew that everything would be all right. Adam had the power to love her, even if he was still learning. The proof was in more than his warming to her presence. It was hidden deep within her, waiting to grow into something beautiful they could both call theirs.

Ruby wept. The nightmare was over at last. At the moment she'd despaired of escaping, it had metamorphosed into a dream beyond her most desperate wishes. As Adam folded his arms around her and stroked her hair, Ruby realized that she didn't want it to end after all.


	4. Rebirth

Perched on stark white cliffs above an ever-raging sea, the tranquil town of Shiroi-no-Umi was a study in contrasts. The dangerously convex cliffside was held in place by a massive maze of scaffolding that reached into the foaming tide with fingers of wood, at once anchor and support for the community that slept above it.

It was early in the morning here, and Adam and Ruby walked hand in hand through the creaking forest of beams and platforms holding the town up. The scaffolding was a maze that had given rise to its own community beneath the town proper. Shops, houses, and even a small fighting ring hung in the air above the churning water, a home hewn from the nearby forest, hung from the rock, awash in salt and spray.

Adam had switched his mask for a simple visor and ground down his horns, just for the time being as they let the manhunt fizzle. He wore simple white fisherman's garb that billowed in the gentle morning breeze.

The girl with him was dressed the same, barely recognizable as the Huntress in training that had disappeared in the battle at Haven. Ruby had let her hair grow down past her shoulders the way she'd worn it when she was younger, and she'd dyed the red highlights completely black. She looked almost like Yang's mother in this disguise. But she was shorter, of course, with the curve of her pregnant belly just discernible beneath her flowing clothes.

The town had yet to awaken, but the pair was headed for a long-awaited rest. They'd been traveling incognito since yesterday afternoon, after the obstetrician started taking longer looks at Ruby's face. The missing person posters were several months out of date, but there was no mistaking those silver eyes.

Shiroi-no-Umi was slow to wake up to news that whipped the rest of the world into a lather. It was remote, its people inclined to quiet.

That was why Adam had chosen it to start a family. That was what led him to the front door of a humble ball of planks and nails, shards of a shipwreck lashed into a new home. He helped Ruby across the threshold, led her down a crooked hallway and helped her ease herself down onto a feather bed.

She sighed as the weight left her feet. “Oof. This is getting tough.” She leaned back on one hand, rubbing her belly with the other. “You're really tiring Mama out, you know that?”

Adam chuckled again. “We'll have the luxury of rest now. This town's too sleepy to pay any mind to some fisherman and his wife.”

That sent a flutter through Ruby's heart. “I like the sound of that,” she mused, smiling absently. “It sounds...safe.” She leaned into Adam's chest; he had sat down next to her and wrapped an arm around the girl who had once been his enemy. His hand joined hers on her belly, feeling the gentle kicks within.

“So,” Adam said. “Twins.”

“Gah...I can't believe it. Guess it explains why I'm so huge at six months.” Ruby thought back to yesterday, how she'd nearly fainted on seeing two fetuses sleeping inside her. One a boy, one a girl; one a human, one a Faunus. Fraternal twins weren't unheard of, but human/Faunus splits were one in a million.

“Thoughts on their names?”

Ruby looked up at the ceiling, sticking her tongue out as she thought. “Hmm...I like Autumn.”

“Autumn. Autumn…” The name brought a smile to Adam's face as he tested it on his tongue. “Not Summer?”

“I thought about it.” Ruby shrugged. “But there's only one Summer Rose. But then I thought 'well, what comes after summer?’” One of the babies kicked as if in response, and she patted her belly with a smile. “Autumn, of course.”

It was such an innocent progression of logic that Adam couldn't help but grin. Even after all Ruby had been through, she still looked for the beauty in the simplest things. “Autumn it is. And the other one?”

“You decide. But!” Ruby tapped Adam's nose. A warning, but a playful one. “I have to approve it.”

“Doesn't seem fair. You got one already.”

“And I have to carry them both for nine months!” Ruby pouted. As was often the case when she pouted, the decision was final. She only pouted when she knew she'd won.

“Okay, have it your way,” Adam laughed, kissing her on the top of her head. She squirmed and giggled, then tilted her head up to meet his lips. The kiss quickly became two, then four, then multiplied beyond that. Ruby was the first to venture tongue.

Tired as he was, Adam was not one to sleep when things grew heated.

He threw his teeth into the fray - first nipping at Ruby's bottom lip, then moving to her neck and biting down. Ruby gasped as Adam worked down to where the delicate flesh of her neck met her shoulder. She obligingly slid her robes from her shoulders, leaving her torso bare before her lover. Her abs were lost to her pregnancy, her firm round stomach hiding her children as her breasts had swollen to one day feed them.

Every inch of Ruby was fertile and beautiful to Adam. He cupped her hip and pulled her into him, kneading her ass as he pressed himself against her. He was already hard, and she found his length easily in the folds of his clothes. She knew the way well by now. Her hormones had set her on the path almost every free night they had.

In seconds they were naked together again, lost in each other they way they longed to be allowed to each day. Ruby was learning aggression from Adam’s kisses, matching him for strength and for desire and even sneaking a bite or two past him. She stroked his hardness and rubbed him against her belly, rolling her hips to bring her pussy closer. Her whimpers were music to him, rising as he squeezed her engorged breasts.

The agony of want only increased for them both as Adam slid down Ruby’s body. His cock was numb with hardness, and rubbing it against Ruby’s plush pussy only served to torment him. But as much as he wanted to ravish her, he wanted to hear her beg for it. Some things never changed.

“Adam, come on...” Ruby bit her lip where Adam had bit, the pain a poor substitute for the most exquisite sensation Adam could grant her. “I need it.”

“What do we say?” Adam kissed his way down Ruby’s neck, burying his face in her breasts.

“Please…”

“What do we say?” He took a dark nipple in his mouth, circled it with his tongue.

Ruby took Adam by the chin and fixed him with a steely glare. “Fuck me, Adam. My pussy is hungry.”

Adam had taught her well. He smiled, moving back up to kiss her. “As you wish.” He stood up and helped Ruby move to the edge of the bed. She spread her legs for him and looked up at her love, silver eyes pleading. Even standing, Adam could smell her arousal. It was tempting to drag this out even longer, to run his fingers up and down her soft, slick nether lips. But he’d teased her enough. Ruby took a deep breath as Adam lined up his manhood with her core. She let it out in a long, shuddering sigh as he slid fully inside her.

She felt full to bursting these days. Ruby’s womb bulged with her twins, her breasts strained with the promise of milk, her heart ached with its surfeit of love. Only when they were alone could the puzzle of her happiness be a little more complete, when Adam could join her in her most secret place. The feeling of being stretched was too fleeting. Ruby coveted it all the more for its inevitable end.

Adam lifted her legs and rocked his hips forward, drawing a cry from Ruby as he pushed himself deeper still. She gave herself over to wordlessness, letting her body speak for itself as Adam’s thrusts wrenched moan after moan from her throat. It was heaven, surrendering this way. Her pregnancy made her tire easily and feel every inch of him more intensely. Letting her aggressive bull slake his thirst solved both problems.

He fucked her faster, harder, blurring her vision as he hammered his girth at her innermost walls. She grabbed the sheets tight with one hand, pawed at her breast with the other, anything to keep from digging her nails into her palms. She was tightening up in that way she had, coiling her every nerve head to toe as she prepared for the onset of her climax. Adam could feel it too, his efforts rewarded by the tightness mounting upon his cock. Ruby squeezed and released him, stronger and more erratic as her body slipped beyond conscious control.

The ripples of pleasure were cascading, overlapping, whipping up a thick fog that settled over Ruby and made her thoughts sluggish with lust. She could feel her pussy quivering already, sensed the slow unraveling in her core that would send her into the throes of an orgasm and crash her brain entirely. All Adam needed was a little more encouragement. “Come for me, bull,” Ruby managed to purr. “Give me every drop of you. I’ll eat what’s left.” Once upon a time such talk would have sounded strange in her innocent voice, but her voice was all that remained innocent about her.

Her words worked the last bit of magic Adam needed. Ruby’s thighs sang with the burn of his grip. He drove himself further, held himself there longer, until finally he stopped moving altogether. Numbness radiated from Ruby’s deepest point, cold fire that flared hot and died down in waves that set her hips bucking, her thighs shaking. She was aware of each sensation and the thrill it brought her, the pooling warmth where Adam seeded her chief among them. 

Adam’s arms shook as he placed them on either side of Ruby’s, as he leaned down to kiss the girl he’d fallen in love with. He moved his hips back, making to pull out of her, when he met resistance from behind. Ruby had locked her legs around Adam, holding him in place. She shook her head and smiled. “Nope. You stay right there.”

She could be sexy or adorable as the situation demanded, and the transition between one and the other was seamless. Adam nodded, though he carefully maneuvered their bodies so he could climb on the bed and curl up with Ruby without withdrawing from her greedy folds. They cuddled like that as the morning crept by, the gray of the eastern Mistralite coast inviting itself in.

Adam fell asleep quickly. Ruby had a rare moment to herself, marveling again at where her life had brought her. She was in a corner of the world beyond its troubles, sharing a bed with a terrorist and pregnant with his children.

Former terrorist, she corrected herself. Their children. She rubbed her belly and hummed a lullaby she remembered her father singing to her. She wasn’t looking forward to moving around in three months. By that time she’d probably be bigger in the chest than Yang.

Sadness stole back into her heart. Would she see her sister again, her team, her family? She had thought they might come for her once. But their quest for the relics was too important. They couldn’t spare the time or the people.

Then what time had she to spare?

Another flurry of kicks from inside her shushed those concerns. It didn’t matter why she’d ended up here. A series of unforeseen events had started her on the quest, and another series had taken her out of it. In both cases, it was hers only to make the best of the situation.

Right now the best was to give her babies the love and care they deserved. When she had given birth and her new family could travel more freely, Ruby could track down her old one. She would be the mother that Summer Rose never got the chance to be, with the most dangerous man in the world by her side.

And the danger was over.


	5. Epilogue

“Esau, I’m going to kill you!”

Adam clenched his jaw against the vice-like grip on his hand. It was a fake name Ruby was screaming; Mistral’s authorities hadn’t spent close to a year looking for an Esau Aries. The hospital at Kuchinashi would record the birth of twins to his wife Garnet Aries. For all but the most determined sleuths, that would be the end of it.

Tears and sweat made Ruby’s face damp and red as the cloak she’d left behind. She was small and seventeen, and even with the extra curves of pregnancy her belly dominated her slight frame. In the days since Ruby had felt her earliest contractions, she and Adam had been able to ward off the anxiety with excitement. The babies would have comfortable clothes and toys to play with, and two of the most caring, protective parents on Remnant. Their future was secure.

But first they had to get here.

“Gonna be a hard one to explain to the kids,” he said dryly. They’d been in the maternity ward for hours, and he hadn’t once left Ruby’s side. They’d chased away the pain and the fear with the past and the future; stories of Ruby’s time at Beacon and Adam’s journey from activist to terrorist; dreams of settling down and raising a family that was living proof that humans and Faunus could coexist.

Yet at a certain point, Adam was going to have to leave it up to Ruby. Her contractions gripped her body, her belly rippling with the impatient movement of the babies and firming up as her muscles struggled to push them out. They grew more frequent, more intense, and the conversation was growing necessarily sparse as Ruby focused on breathing and relaxing. The staff attending to her seemed to multiply as the day dragged on.

One of them, a nurse wearing a black face mask, finally approached Adam. “Mr. Aries, if you could step out for a moment…”

“I’m not leaving her.” Adam felt bad already. The nurse was only doing his job.

“The transition stage is a sensitive time for your wife.”

“The doctors told me all about that. I need to be here!”

The nurse sighed. “There’s been a complication. One of the twins is a Faunus-”

“I know that.”

“-and her horns are more developed than they should be. A natural birth would be dangerous.”

Oh. That was a different matter. Though she wasn’t calling the shots, Adam looked at Ruby for permission. He needed to hear it from her. She gulped once, paused to catch her breath, forced a smile and nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

She sounded uncertain, but Adam hadn’t come this far with her not to trust in her word. She knew her body best of all. Her Aura had returned in forced since the collar shackling it had been removed. Even so, nightmare visions haunted Adam as he was guided from the room. He saw Ruby writhing in agony on the bed, her body aglow with red as her Aura broke and burned away, leaving her at the mercy of an impossible birth.

He bit his tongue against any further protest. He’d discarded fear long ago, hadn’t he?

But that was before he became a father.

The hall was empty and quiet compared to the bustle of activity that was Ruby’s room. Adam sat down at the nurse’s invitation, though he refused the offer of a cigarette to calm his nerves. He’d have to smoke outside, and out here was already far enough away from Ruby. As he searched for some way to distract himself, Adam couldn’t help but notice the way the nurse seemed to be looking at him. “Don’t you have a job to do?”

The nurse nodded. “At your request.”

That struck Adam as odd. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I didn’t think it was possible.” The nurse’s voice had softened, gaining a note of respect that Adam found distinctly unnerving. “They said you were dead.”

Cold alarm crawled up Adam’s spine, twisting a knife he’d thought he’d pulled out of his soul and thrown aside. “What are you-”

He never thought the sight of a fellow Faunus could terrify him. The nurse pulled down his mask to reveal a set of small tusks like a boar. The mask was plain black on the outside, but the red insignia hidden within was all too familiar. A snarling tiger’s face and claw marks made clear the nurse’s true loyalty.

Adam was on his feet in an instant, his hand on the nurse’s throat. “If you hurt her, I-”

The boar Faunus’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “Sir! Never. Capturing the human girl...it makes a statement most of us would never dream of. It’s an honor to witness the birth of your heirs.”

“She’s not a captive, she’s my wife. The White Fang you knew is dead.” Adam shoved the nurse against the wall. A familiar red fog was sneaking into the edges of his vision, and Adam was tempted then and there to kill him. Perhaps he would have, long ago when it was kill or be killed. 

It took every ounce of restraint Ruby had taught Adam, but he merely shook his head and sighed. “One final order. Make sure my wife is safe, whatever happens. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll forget you ever saw me.” He slackened his grip on the nurse’s neck and pushed him toward the door they’d come through.

The terror in the nurse’s eyes was intimately familiar to Adam. It was something he could trust, at least in the short term. Fear was a weapon of tempting utility, in whose use he had spent a lifetime training. How easy it was to pick it up again, in direct proportion to the difficulty of putting it down.

Ruby had made it easier. It would fall to Adam to discard it entirely. He supposed he’d spend his life learning to.

\--

He had to keep one hand on the rail along the side of the hallway. The cold metal comforted him, because it had never felt that way when he’d dreamed about this moment. Adam took it one step at a time, resisted the urge to throw wide the door separating him from the cries on the other side.

There lay Ruby. She was exhausted, with dark rings under her eyes and her hair matted with sweat. The blanket must have covered a nasty scar where they’d had to cut her open to safely deliver Autumn.

But she was alive, as were the two little pink and blue bundles squirming at her breasts.

All the apprehension that gripped Adam fled before the sight of his family.

Ruby smiled up at him as he came to her side. “Hey, big bull,” she said. “You wanna meet our calves?” She jiggled the twins in her arms, pulling them from where they nursed. “Come on. Meet Daddy.” The kids whimpered as Ruby moved them, but stayed quiet as Adam helped Ruby hold them.

“So this is Autumn,” Adam said, taking his daughter in his arms. She was a bull Faunus like her father, and already had his horns. “You gave Mommy a lot of trouble, you know.” Not that it was her fault. Adam stroked her horns, smiling as Autumn shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Here, trade me.” Ruby handed the boy to Adam, taking Autumn back. “This one still needs a name.” She returned Autumn to her breast, letting her latch on again to continue her first meal.

Warmth spread through Adam, beginning in his heart and radiating through him like he’d never dreamed it could. The boy had fallen asleep already, which seemed odd. His mother was supposed to be the tired one.

Adam didn’t question it. He stroked his son’s head as he supported him in his arms, running his fingers through short, reddish-brown hair. “Auburn,” he said, finding the proper word for the color. He said it again, and the more he heard it out loud the more comfortable he was using it for the rest of his life.

“Auburn, huh?” Ruby cocked her head, smiling. “Autumn and Auburn Taurus. I like it!”

“They’re taking my name?”

Ruby shrugged in that eternally earnest way she had. There wasn’t a shred of doubt or dishonesty in her. “I’m taking it, aren’t I? Once we’re official, that is.” Her smile widened as she returned her gaze to her daughter. “Ruby Taurus. I can definitely get used to that.”

They’d have to spend a couple more days in the hospital while Ruby recovered. She had to be cleared to walk, cleared to travel, the babies thoroughly examined and their health verified beyond doubt. There were a lot of long conversations ahead - where they’d go from here, how they’d get back into Hunting, how Ruby would reunite with her team. She couldn’t wait to introduce her children to their Auntie Yang.

Adam had his own set of challenges ahead. He’d have to apologize to Blake. He’d have to prove himself worthy of forgiveness. Destroying the shrine had been the first step to mending the damage his obsession had done, and there would be many more. But he felt the rest would only get easier from here. He had new responsibilities, new lives to live his own for.

He’d take them as they came. For now, there was rest, recovery, renewal.

Autumn opened her eyes, looking up to meet Ruby’s loving gaze. They sparkled with innocence, with trust, promising a soul every bit as pure as her mother’s.

She had her mother’s eyes. Silver, like the blade of Crescent Rose. It was waiting for Ruby, wrapped in a crimson bow back at the home she and Adam had built. It could wait a little more.


End file.
